‘The Operation Was a Success but the Patient Died’

In the end, the patient “received alemtuzumab followed by total-skin electron-beam therapy and a reduced-intensity-regimen stem-cell transplant.” The dermatologist adds that the patient “is currently doing well, 1 year after the transplantation.”

A triumph, then, you might think! But in the next paragraph the pathologist says, “Unfortunately, she died approximately 1 year later of transplant-related coronary artery disease, with the lymphoma in complete remission.”

This rather peculiar juxtaposition of the patient doing well, in the present tense, and of having died at the same time, rather casts doubt on the way in which such case histories are constructed or redacted. The patient is cured, but the patient died. However, it is by such contradictions that medicine makes its strides.